


And we'd put the tree house there

by Sunshine170



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 05:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine170/pseuds/Sunshine170
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not used to this. Things working out, falling into place and the world not ending on them. Its too good to be true. It won't last, Olivia thinks. It can't... Can it? Post S4 fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

After the initial euphoria wears down, they don't talk about it for some time.

There's simply too much that has happened, the enormity of what they've been through making it a little hard to put the abstract thought of having created a new life into concrete terms, terms in which they could bring themselves to actually talk about.

It doesn't surprise her at all when he asks her as they drive back to her apartment if she'd prefer he stay at his place for a few days.

Another woman might have found it a callous gesture, to be asked if she'd prefer to be left alone after having gone through the day she had, or perhaps wondered if the emotional upheavals of having a dead girlfriend resurrect and then be told she was pregnant had finally done it for him, that the old Peter Bishop had decided to stage a comeback after all, or rather was gunning to make a break for it.

She couldn't blame him really.

She'd be disappointed, devastated, heartbroken, of course, but she couldn't blame him.

But his voice is sincere, and Olivia knows it's not that. That he is familiar with the way her mind works, knows she likes to processes things by herself, come to terms with major life changes in private before she's ready to include him.

It's why, where every instinct would tell him to keep her in his sight at all times, especially now, after what they went through mere hours ago, Peter does what Olivia expects he will do…put her consideration before his.

"Stay." She tells him simply.

She doesn't tell him, that him being next to her is about the only thing keeping her sane in that moment, the knot in her stomach so tight, she wonders how she hasn't doubled over and snapped into two yet.

* * *

She sleeps soundly that night, body too exhausted to mull over things that need some definite mulling over and wakes up rather late the next morning to the smell of fresh coffee, finding him already up, sitting in the kitchen in front of his laptop.

It's a reassuring sight to place her eyes on him, in her apartment.

"Morning." She saunters in, running her hands through his sleep tousled hair, automatically reaching into the cabinet to pull out a mug for herself when she remembers and stills. She looks from the corner of the her eye where she knows he is watching her, and holds the mug for just an extra second to see if he'll say something.

But he doesn't and she simply sets it down and pulls out a glass instead and pours herself some juice from the fridge, taking a seat in front of him, unaware as if that he's watching her the whole time.

He gives her a smile, but again doesn't say anything, or comment on the switch in her morning beverage.

"It's nice and sunny outside. We could head into town and get some brunch if you felt like it." He tells her instead.

She nods in-between taking a sip of juice. Two can play this game. "That sounds nice."

"I also got us our tickets for next week. "

"Tickets?"

"The jazz concert…" he clarifies, "…at the commons. We went last year remember? And you said you wanted to do it again."

"Right. Of course." She nods, remembering then the conversation they'd had only two days ago… before they got busy trying to stop the universes from ending.

"Unless you don't feel like going anymore?" He looks at her hesitantly. "I am sorry I should have confirmed with you… I can cancel…"

"No we should go." She's shaking her head. "I want to… I mean." She gives him a small smile.

He nods, and they lapse into a few moments of silence, each taking purposeful sips of the beverage they're holding before he shrugs and gives her a questioning look.

"So what else do you feel like doing?" He asks her.

"About?" She asks cautiously.

"With our free week." He clarifies. "Broyles said we could even take off till next Wednesday if we wanted. I was thinking we could maybe catch a couple of movies, and there's a Bruins game this weekend, you like hockey don't you? We could even get away for a couple of days if you're in the mood for a little vacation…"

He stops talking when he looks at her blank expression, his face falls a little. After a second or two of waiting for a response from her, he nods with a sad smile, his eyes drifting away. "If you have other plans that's okay."

He was doing it again, Olivia thinks, trying to give her space and not broach the obvious subject until she took initiative, until she made some clear indication that she was okay to talk about this, distracting her and possibly himself instead with talk of plans that could keep them busy without really taxing them. He's desperately trying to keep it casual. To act as if nothing has changed, like they were still the same couple they were forty eight hours ago and hadn't been suddenly hurled towards impending parenthood that was a close nine months away.

Seven and half months … a voice in her head automatically corrects her. She's been pregnant for six weeks already.

He hasn't even asked her how far along she was, Olivia thinks with a twinge of disappointment.

It won't do. No, this won't do at all.

She wishes for once he would just disregard this maddening patience he has always had with her closely guarded boundaries, that he would just say hell with it and ask her if she was feeling alright, if she needed anything, if she had thought about making an Ob/Gyn appointment maybe.

If he could just stop being so _Peter_  and not act all in deference of her and make some acknowledgement of the fact that she was carrying his child…their child.

_Their child…_

Suddenly the air seems to have become depleted of all the oxygen.

"I love hockey." She says, reaching for his hand, giving him a full smile. "And a movie sounds great. But I was thinking we could also maybe find some time to go take a look at some of those listings you were talking about."

He looks at her with a surprised expression and she simply shrugs. "Like you said we do have a whole week off, might as well get started on that."

_We're going to need the extra space sooner than we thought._ She almost says, but stops herself.

One step at a time. They can do this.

_They can do this?_

He nods at her, and then furrows his brows in concentration as if remembering something.

"You know what, Lara in the Marine Biology department, told me a few days ago about this really great house in the neighborhood she stays in." He says, looking to his laptop.

"Who is Lara?" Olivia looks at him with some curiosity. "Have we worked with her for a case before?"

"No you don't know her." He shakes his head. "I met her at a department conference Walter dragged me to a few months ago where she was presenting and we got coffee afterwards to talk about her research some more. "

"Really?"

He then shrugs when he catches her knowing glance. "We may or may not have occasionally hooked up in the other timeline. Didn't amount to much but we stayed friends …or until I got erased and whatnot. But we reconnected so we're friends again I suppose, except she doesn't know we were friends before…a little more than friends. I wonder if that's' ethically wrong… to know that about someone when they don't know it themselves. it's an interesting philosophical question if you think about it, except you can't because the logic of time travel would mean a temporal switch which would imply the action precedes the ethical dilemma which then would negate the need for having one in the first place…" He rambles, talking more to himself.

"Peter…"Olivia interrupts in a patient voice and he stops when he sees her mildly exasperated look.

"Right. My life is weird. But you already know that." He sighs with a nod. "Anyway to answer the question you're dying to ask but won't , it was long before you and I got together or even got ten miles within the radius of getting together… and she's married now." He hastens to add and she simply laughs.

"I wasn't dying to ask anything." She says categorically. "And since when are you so interested in Marine Biology research?"

"I happen to be interested in a lot of things. There's a lot more to Harvard than Walter's emporium of believe it or not." He gives her a teasing look. "Some of the brightest minds in the world work there. You'd meet the most fascinating people doing the most brilliant things if you took the time and actually got out of the basement."

"I'll take that under advisement." She nods with a smile. "You were saying something about a house?" She says then trying to bring them back to topic.

"Right, so I ran into her a few days ago and was telling her how we were looking for a new place and she told me we should check this house out. It's in Cambridge, really close to campus. Her husband's a realtor. I could give him a call, set up a meeting time for us to go look at it." He's already back on his laptop, trying to pull up information, but he pauses to look at her for a brief second.

"Is that okay?"

"That sounds great." She nods, ignoring the little flip that her stomach does.

_One step at a time…_

* * *

Olivia falls in love with the house the moment they walk into it.

It's like an intense head rush, reminiscent of a teenage crush that grips her, an enthusiasm that she didn't even know she was capable of feeling for a building of four walls and a roof, her approach to finding accommodations having always been strictly functional for the most part.

It's nothing like the old Bishop house in Cambridge, this one a lot more modern with uncluttered spaces, clean lines and large windows that allowed for ample sunlight.

But it's the same feeling that she's had all her all those time she had stayed over at Peter's place… the feeling of being home.

She keeps calm on the outside, as the agent takes them around. She can't gauge Peter's reaction yet. He has that unreadable poker face of his on as he asks the practical questions that she doesn't remember to ask, too enamored by the thoughts of living here.

Olivia wanders off on her own, while Peter continues to talk to the agent, not missing the fact that he's asking about the schools in the area. She makes her way upstairs, as if on instinct, finding her way to the corner room on the second floor which served as the nursery.

It hits her the moment she walks into the room, a longing so strong that it doesn't even compare to the early morning musing she had shared with Peter on a whim just a couple of days ago, the desire she has slowly but surely been nursing for over a year now, since that night she had kissed him in a bar.

And suddenly Olivia knows as she takes in the room, that this was the house she wanted. This would be their home, where they would bring their baby home from the hospital. This is the home in which she would raise her daughter… _daughter…_  where she would read to her and put her to bed every night.

Peter could build a tree house for the big Ash in the backyard and they could tie a swing to one of the branches.

They could have tea parties in this very room.

She has memories of those. Sitting around a little table with stuffed animals and a two year old Rachel who kept upsetting her carefully laid out plastic tea set because she was too excited. Her mom would bake real cupcakes for them and her father would play with them too, after coming home from work, still in his uniform, sitting on a chair several sizes too small for him, where he pretended to sip imaginary tea and eat cupcakes with them.

It's a life she had had once, she almost forgets. A life that was every bit perfect and normal as it could get, when her father had been alive and she felt safe and protected and nothing could ever get to her because he was there to take care of her, to make everything better.

It's the kind of life she wants for her child. It's the kind of life any child should have, to never have to hide under beds and cower in fear, or lie in school about falling down and learn how to use concealer at the age of eight to hide bruises…or kill someone with a gun.

And just like that she's afraid, impossibly afraid of everything, of this happiness.

Its too good to be true, too good too last.

"Olivia…" Peter's calling for her, snapping her out of her thoughts and she turns around to see him standing at the doorway.

"He said we could have a few more minutes to look around."

She nods and she sees him look around the room, probably thinking about the same things she was thinking, a soft smile playing on his lips as he meets her eyes.

"This is the house I want." She tells him, trying to quell her anxieties and seem happy.

He smiles and nods. "Don't you think you'd like to see some more places before you decide that?"

"There's no need." She shrugs. "I want this one…if you do too that is." She adds,

He smiles again, moving closer to her, lips pressing against her forehead.

"I want what you want." He tells her.

"Okay." She nods, folding over into his embrace, shakily.

"Okay."

_Its going to be okay._ She tells herself, trying not to tremble violently as she feels happy and overwhelmed and so, so scared...

_It has to be._


	2. Chapter 2

"Those off shore accounts would have been pretty useful right about now." He, mumbles more to himself as he works away on his laptop, crunching the numbers on their financials, trying to figure out if they could afford the asking price on the house.

"What off shore accounts?" Olivia looks at him suspiciously from the reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushes her hair.

"Oh nothing." He gives her a smooth smile, before shrugging. "They don't exist anymore. Literally…"

She simply smiles to herself, shaking her head, wondering for the umpteenth time since she'd met Peter, if she'll ever truly know all of his secrets, be allowed a full window into his mysterious past.

Not that it really matters, because she knows him in a way that makes the details irrelevant. In a lot of ways, they had reinvented each other… taken two shambles of human beings and made them whole, made them more than their damaged pasts and their broken families.

As she brushes her hair in slow, unhurried strokes, she inadvertently falls into her recently developed tendency to observe her image in the mirror. She stares deliberately, trying to note the changes in her body, mentally cataloging for anything that advertises to the world, her new condition.

And like every time she has done this for the past four days, she's coming up with zilch.

She doesn't look pregnant…she doesn't even feel pregnant. There's no mythical glow that emanates from her. All of the annoying symptoms that expectant mothers so liked to complain about have yet to materialize and truth be told, her life doesn't feel changed in anyway, if you didn't count the fact that she no longer drinks any coffee and the nightcaps of Johnny Walker that she's so fond are now no longer possible.

She doesn't know what she's supposed to feel… or even how to feel really.

Peter and she are still playing their little game of Chicken and it's getting rather stupid at this point. To not talk about the obvious, acting like nothing in fact had changed. The only time they have discussed her pregnancy was when the subject of her OB/GYN appointment came up yesterday and even then, it had been functional for most part.

She's can't help but be concerned.

It's one thing to need a little time to process such a big change in their lives. It's another to sidestep it altogether and act like everything was just fine.

She's been silent too, she knows. Hesitant, which is unlike her, because closed off as she can get, she's not one to avoid confronting the obvious.

But she's ready… ready to at least try and talk about things.

If only he'd take the first step…

Maybe he is afraid, Olivia thinks… afraid of telling her what was really on his mind. Maybe now that he had had the time to think about it properly, he realizes he doesn't want this life after all. Home, family, kids… the whole deal.

Her heart sinks as she considers the possibility, her old anxieties coming to bay in a flash. What would she do if he left her alone in this? How was she supposed to handle this by herself?

_Stop it._  She tells herself sternly, stopping the train of thought before it spiraled out of control.

_You're being silly. You saw his face when you told him. He wants this…of course he wants this._

Then why doesn't he seem interested in this at all? She can't help wonder…What was stopping him from coming to her with questions?

_This is his baby after all. You'd think he'd be more curious._

The baby… her heart skips a beat when she think about it, the images of the nursery from the house flashing in front of her eyes, like it does every time. It's the only image she can think of for the time being. There is no picture that forms in her head, no eyes or lips or hair color that she can conjure in her imagination to visualize her baby.

It's not that she doesn't want to. The temptation is overwhelmingly strong really. To put a face to what only seems like an idea right now… so far removed from her reality as it exists. To imagine the possibilities…

But it's too soon to go there. Too much can go wrong and she can't bring herself to hope unfettered like she wants to.

Maybe that's why she can't bring herself to broach the subject with Peter. Because if they talked about it… it would seem so much more real.  _She_ would become real… their daughter, no longer just a late night musing her half asleep mind would idly dream up, long before Peter was anything more than a trusted colleague, the thought of a child of her own someday… (even in those half formed fantasies, it was always with him… she never really could understand the ways of her sub conscience back then).

And if her child became real, so did everything else… her fears, her anxieties, her inability to be a good mother, the very real dangers of this world that could harm her, hurt her in so many unthinkable ways.

How was Olivia supposed to bring a child into a universe that had made it its personal mission to destroy her physically and emotionally in the last four years? That had reached across time and space to take away her happiness, ripped from her hands everything that meant something to her, including the man she loved beyond reason.

It's almost enough to make Olivia want to hide under the covers and never leave her bed.

She pushes away the thoughts in her head firmly as she feels the spike in her heartbeat and the quickening of her pulse, determined not to get racked up with worry all over again. It didn't do her any good and the stress was certainly no good for the baby.

Self-care was admittedly not a big part of her repertoire, but its difficult to not make an effort when there's another life connected to hers.

She sets the brush down with a sigh, biting her lower lip and takes several calming deep breaths, repeating to herself what has become her mantra over the past week.

_Everything is going to be okay. She's going to be okay…_

_You are going to get through this._  She tells herself.

_With or without Peter_. A voice in her head is helpless to add.

_This is your child. You'll be there for her no matter what._

On impulse, she lifts the hem of her tank top slightly to reveal her navel, pressing a slow, tentative hand to her flat belly.

It didn't feel any different, but she knows that will change…in a matter of weeks if not days, as her baby grows. She'll be able to feel her kick and move.

In a definite number of days…. She'll actually hold her in her arms and be able to see her.

Something shifts within her as she considers that particular thought. Like for the first time her heart is not so afraid of being let down by fate. A certainty that, she'll get that moment no matter what, no matter what comes afterward.

"We might have to sell a kidney each, but it looks like we can get the house after all …" Peter's voice interrupts her thoughts and she shakes them away, too caught up in her pleasant musings.

Its few seconds before he speaks up again, having gotten no response from her.

"Olivia did you hear what I…" He stops abruptly and she then looks up at the reflection to find him standing behind her, looking at her with an odd expression, his gaze moving to the hand that was still pressed against her stomach.

She lowers it immediately…giving him a somewhat guilty look at being caught at…. something that should not make her feel guilty.

Embarrassed maybe… but not guilty.

"Umm yeah… sorry what were you saying about the house?" She mutters sheepishly, averting her gaze immediately, as he moves close to her,

"Don't…" He stops her as she tries to pull down her shirt, his eyes still fixed on her midriff. Mirroring her actions from a couple of minute again, he reaches out with his hand hesitantly, hovering an inch away, before he looks up with her, swallowing heavily.

He looks nervous…unsure of his place, something she's never seen in him before.

"May I?"

His voice is merely above a whisper, and she can't be sure she actually heard him speak if he wasn't standing so close to her. It's hopeful… heartbreakingly so, but there is a firm note of deference underlying it. It wasn't a mere statement of courtesy but a genuine request.

He was asking for permission…

And Olivia realizes then what has been holding him back for so long.

Because her doubts were his doubts too. Because he's been afraid like her, of wanting too much, of losing it all again.

And because, and this is almost laughable, he's not sure if she wants him in this with her.

She simply gives him a nod, unable to speak, as his hand grazes against her stomach, once twice… before settling with finality. His touch is feather light, but astonishingly real as he pulls her closer to his body, pinning her back to his chest. His chin finds the slope of her neck and he inhales softly, eyes never leaving her middle.

There's something indiscernible in his eyes… a softness, a quiet bliss. It lends them a beautiful hue of blue, one she's never seen before.

"This is really happening to us isn't it?" He whispers after a few seconds have passes, pressing a kiss to her earlobe, as his hold becomes firmer.

"We're having a baby."

There is an awe in his voice, a wonder-struck quality that she knows all too well. She intertwines his hand in hers, closing her eyes.

"We're having a baby." She says happily, and let's herself believe it for the first time.

It's not much, but it's enough to unlock a piece of the puzzle in her head and she lets herself imagine.

The eyes… her baby's eyes, she can picture them now…

They're blue.


	3. Chapter 3

"I am hungry…"

Peter looks up from the book he's reading, throws a sideways glance at Olivia who's contemplating her nails with a serious expression.

"Do you want me to fix you something?" He says somewhat distractedly, completely immersed in his reading of phenomenology. Retreating into high theory is his unique way of decompressing, one of the good quirks he's glad to have inherited from his father.

"I think… I want to eat some Indian."

"Okay…" He reaches for the phone without looking up from his book, used by now to Olivia's strange and nocturnal desires for exotic foods. "I'll order some. What do you want?"

"How about we go out?"

He pauses, frowning at the bedside clock.

"It's 11:15."

"They're open real late." She's out of bed in the next moment, grabbing his fleece hoodie from the floor, zipping it up with her usual efficiency, already out of the bedroom before he can even begin to protest.

_It's really cold outside._

_It's late._

_We've had a long day._

_It's really cold outside._

He contemplates all the excuses he can think of to try and talk her out of it.

"You coming?" She's looking at him impatiently, her sock clad foot tapping the wooden floor, hands in pockets, resting on her now ample stomach, looking extremely determined to do this, with or without him.

He sighs, slipping out of bed, reaching for his discarded jeans.

Heidegger will have to wait, it would seem. He grabs his other jacket. Olivia has commandeered the one he was using, helps her tie up her sneakers that she can no longer see with her belly getting in the way and reaches for the car keys when she stops him.

"I want to walk." She shrugs, taking his hand and leading him out of the door, leaving no room for argument.

It's over five blocks in the cold at night, and he's not so sure Olivia should be exerting herself like this. But he keeps his reservations to himself and they walk.

_Whatever Olivia wants, Olivia gets,_  Walter had made him promise months ago, extolling at length on the virtues of being an obedient and compliant expectant father. You didn't want to be on the wrong side of a pregnant woman, he had told him, eyes speaking of trauma past, an incident over a pint of strawberry ice cream that had nearly ended in divorce.

At seven months, Olivia looks well… definitely pregnant, Peter thinks, as they make their way slowly. Somewhere overnight, her body simply transformed and he still can't pinpoint when that happened, even if he's been as involved in the whole business as he possibly can be.

Though he doesn't dare tell her that.

"It's such a beautiful night isn't it?" She's looking at the neon lights on the street with a wistful expression, finding in them some romantic quality that obviously only she can see.

He smiles at the way she holds his hand a little tighter. He's still getting used to these generous displays of affection, the ones that come his way more frequently then he remembers.

Something's changed within her. He's glad for it.

They walk on.

* * *

He opens the door and leads her into the restaurant, a monstrosity of pink and red elephants and over the top cultural insignia, the name Jewel _of India_ written in sparkly font over a huge neon  _Taj Mahal_ sign.

But what it lacked in décor or subtlety, it made up by having sumptuous fare, and so Peter is willing to forgive them the excess. He takes a corner booth in what is a surprisingly occupied restaurant even at this late hour, while Olivia goes to help herself to the late night dinner buffet, the all you can eat variety offering all the curry house staples. He orders himself a cardamom tea and settles into the worn couch seat, making himself comfortable, before Olivia returns with a fairly stacked plate in record time.

"Did you just decide to eat every food on your doctor's to avoid list?" He smiles, looking at the selection on her platter.

"You know what she said about heartburn?"

"That's what we keep the Tums for." She shrugs unfazed, biting into a particular spicy looking piece of skewered cottage cheese, before liberally dousing it into the mint chutney and taking another bite, almost petulantly, as if daring him or any poor well-intentioned OB/GYN to tell her otherwise.

"Whatever you say dear." He replies without further comment, the corners of his mouth twitching with laughter.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" She observes as a waiter arrives with his tea, setting it down on the table.

"Not really hungry." He shrugs, sipping his spicy, fragrant beverage, letting it warm him up.

"That's odd because I am starving." She shakes her head at him in a baffled way and begins to work her way through the food with an attention she usually reserves for cases.

"Yeah… I can see that." He nods. He leaves out the little fact that they had just eaten a full dinner less than three hours ago. Somehow he doesn't think Olivia would take too kindly to him pointing that out.

Leaving her to the pursuit of culinary delights, he whips out the copy of  _Being and Time_  he'd pocketed before leaving the house and turns to the page he'd been reading earlier.

He loves the woman. He really does, but he simply  _hates_ being interrupted in the middle of a good read.

"We never checked if there's a good Indian place near the new house." She says suddenly, after minutes have passed and she's back from the buffet after a refill.

He looks up from his book to Olivia as she considers him with a worried expression. They move in two days. The house all signed over and sold and shaken over.

"There are plenty of places where you can get great food in Cambridge. I am sure we'll find a good Indian restaurant that'll do."

"You don't know that." She looks unsure all of a sudden.

"Actually I do. I grew up there remember. Trust me there are more than enough takeout places."

It's just a block away from his childhood home, their new house. A pleasant coincidence. If he were a man to put stock in signs, he'd take that as approval from the universe and for once, being in such close proximity to his past doesn't make his skin crawl. It's familiar, like slipping into an old, threadbare t shirt.

Strangely, it makes him happier than he'd care to admit to anybody.

"What if there aren't?" Olivia is giving him a challenging look.

"Then we'll drive…. whenever you want to eat here. Promise." He chuckles. "We're only moving across the river, not to the other side of the ocean."

"I am not sure how I feel about that." She purses her lips meaningfully at him as if seriously reconsidering the move.

And Peter suddenly finds himself wondering if she would just call off the whole thing in some hormone induced epiphany.

There has to be some limit to being the compliant expectant father right?

He clears his throat, chuckling nervously. "Well you better find a way of being okay with it sweetheart. The mortgage is in your name."

One of the many perks of being erased from time; he doesn't actually have a credit history.

"This is the best Indian food I am ever going to find…" A mournful sigh escapes her throat, no doubt, as the thought of having to live outside the delivery zone of the restaurant and it amuses Peter just a little bit.

Because he knows, that it's not the thought of moving from Brighton to Cambridge or having to find new takeout menus that bothers her.

It's the change that's daunting. The decision to try and make this work that they've somehow fumblingly committed themselves to and now have to stick with.

It worries him too.

Most days he doesn't doubt their decision, looks forward to the future and gets almost ecstatically lost in the wonders of their child, all of eight weeks shy from making an entrance into this world.

He loves her so much already; it becomes difficult to breathe at times.

But then something happens, some minor, idiotic little event, something that doesn't have anything to do with anything that reminds him of the house of cards they stand upon and he envisions five years from now in a one bedroom apartment, shared custody if he's lucky….weekend visitations.

And he gets scared. Scared of all the ways in which he can fail at this.

How long? He lies in bed thinking...How long before it all fell apart. Before Olivia realized how every kind of wrong he was for this painfully naive suburban life project they were embarking on and cut him loose.

Love is hardly the problem, there's enough of that to go around for a lifetime or two, give or take a universe. If all it took was love, they'd beat the cockroaches to nuclear winter. He doesn't doubt it.

Its trust, trusting each other and maybe themselves that's the problem. And its damaged personal histories and cataclysmic quantum entanglement of universes and just really really rotten timing that's the problem.

Maybe he should propose and be done with, he thinks not for the first time. At least that would take some of the uncertainty out of it. After all, they did live together and had bought a house together and were going to raise a child together.

Might as well make it official. It's only logical.

And yet he hasn't brought up the subject in the last several months. Despite, the presence of more than context for such a discussion and despite his father being irritatingly insistent about them tying the knot.

Marriage is not necessary, or even all that important, but it would be good for them. He knows this. And it would be good for their daughter. He could do it for her. Truth is there is shocking little he wouldn't do for her.

So why can't he just ask Olivia already?

_Because it might be too soon? Because she's going to think he did it just because she was pregnant?_

_Because she might say no?_

"What?" Her eyes are watching him now, privy to the change in his mood in that spooky way of hers.

"What…what?" He feigns ignorance.

"You're thinking something."

"I am a fairly intelligent guy. I am always thinking something."

She narrows her gaze and he smirks, reaching out to wipe a little bit of chutney at the corner of her chin.

"I was thinking that technically… the best Indian food you're ever going to find is in India."

She rolls her eyes predictably, before averting them back to her plate, and then sneaks a casual, questioning look in his direction.

"You've been?"

He gives her an obvious shrug, taking a bite out of the spicy papad from her plate.

It feels tame to him, too tempered for American tastes. Call him a snob, but he is a stickler for authenticity.

"Six months in Mumbai. You have no idea how good the real deal tastes…" He sighs, a wave of nostalgia hitting him

Soft, fluffy nans right out of the kiln at a roadside shack, Malabar fish caught fresh from the Arabian sea, cooked on the beach if you liked, lentils cooked in butter over a mellow open flame all day… smoky, rich, melting in your mouth with each bite.

Olivia would never skip a meal… ever.

"You're saying this is not the real deal?" She looks almost disappointed, an adorable pout making its way to curry stained lips and he wants to kiss her right then. But he resists and gives her a smile.

"It's a bit like eating clam chowder in Albania."

"They make clam chowder in Albania?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"So what were you doing in India?"

"Nothing disreputable…more or less."

She gives him an amused snort, shaking her head.

"We could go sometime you know." He tells her moving to close his hand over hers. "Maybe it could even be our first family vacation?"

She snaps up to look at him, a gob smacked expression on her face, her hand stilling in his, almost like it were frozen.

Wrong move. He thinks, cursing under his breath.

_Never_  throw words like' family' around Olivia Dunham unless you're absolutely sure she's on the same page.

Which she's clearly not.

"I'll get the cheque." He shifts gear, averts his eyes and his disappointment and motions for the waiter while she busies herself with reading the esoteric title of the paperback he's set down on the Formica surface.

They both wait for the moment to pass.

"You should seriously consider going back to school you know that." She tells him then, giving him an amused smile. "You can actually get credit for reading this."

He's more than been considering it. He's been researching classes and talking to professors and wondering between Harvard and MIT. Turning his back on higher education doesn't feel like the big fuck you to his father it had been all those years ago, the spirit of teen rebellion worn thin at 32.

Mostly, he just wants to set a good example for his child. For the tiny little life he's now responsible for. The thought of disappointing her, of being thought of less than in any conceivable way. It's a fear of rejection far more pervasive than a lifetime of daddy issues.

"I am thinking about it." He tells her.

They walk back home in silence and she almost falls asleep on the way, drowsy from rich food and contentment. He helps her into bed and tucks her in, setting the bottle of antacids close by, just in case and climbs into the other side.

* * *

She reaches for him later in the night.

"Peter…"

"Yeah?"

"I'd love to…"

"What?"

"See the world through your eyes."

He open an eyelid followed by another. She's staring at him, a penetrating certainty in her eyes. Her hand moves to fist the sleeve of his shirt and she smiles softly.

"I think India would make a great a first family vacation."

He smiles back. Pulling her closer to him.

"We'll go then." He tells her.

And he believes it too.

 


	4. Chapter 4

He walks through the aisles purposefully, picking up items with the practiced efficiency of a couponing soccer mom. Two percent for him, skim for Olivia, whole grain Cheerios and eggs, bread of course…

Peter's working on auto pilot, navigating the store through a sleep-deprived haze, there's no scope to be imaginative here, his aim being to restock their now painfully empty kitchen with something, anything that spells a modicum of sustenance, keep himself and Olivia on the right side of the nutrition index. He doesn't have the energy or inclination to look for the special deals, the two for ones or any of the extra savings tags. He sticks to staples, pausing by the produce section, he decides on a few things quickly, without any real deliberation, while men and women around him linger and contemplate the many colored fruit with more interest than he has to spare.

But still, he remembers to pick up avocados for Olivia

He knows he looks decidedly ragged, his bone deep exhaustion showing on his face. His standard scruff has turned into something short of a beard and in faded jeans and a shirt that he's not slept in last night, he barely makes it to this side of slovenly.

All things he couldn't care about less. After trying to do some kind of inventory in his head (they're out of peanut butter, its four aisles away, he's not going back- they'll survive without it) he turns to the last item on his agenda, forcing himself to come out of his stupor because this needs nothing short of his full attention.

The baby supplies aisle at the store is a maze of candy colored paraphernalia and for a minute, Peter has double vision. He tries to clear through the fog his mind has been in, and pulls out the list Olivia had hastily scribbled for him.

No one told him, the amount of stuff it takes to tend to a tiny human being. Four days old and their daughter has already been snared into the global consumer culture, he thinks with mild amusement as he proceeds to select the things from the list. His movements are not rehearsed, this is not an aisle of the store he's familiar with, and he has no skill set in the acquisition of these items - diapers, feeding bottles, baby wipes - it's an entirely new world. He pauses, slows down, limbs untensing, he reads packages carefully, scrutinizes the chemical compositions of things that most people wouldn't know anything about (Most people didn't fake being a chemistry professor at MIT).

He takes his time.

No one told him how much he would love being a father...it's like being shot up with a massive dose of happy pills, a supernova of emotions he isn't sure an entire lifetime would suffice to process. To say he's overwhelmed feels like a company line, a poor one word summation of what he is… which is simply everything and more.

A store worker comes up to him and offers assistance, reading his over analysis of the items he's picking up for general cluelessness, apparently common among new fathers.

He assures her he's got it, even shows her the list Olivia wrote out for him when she looks unconvinced and asks again. She nods with some superior feminine wisdom at the items on the list and tells him his wife clearly has a handle on things.

" She's not my wife." He blurts out without thinking and the woman looks immediately contrite, apologizing for the assumption and retreats to go find some other clueless customer, leaving him to think about why he needed to do that exactly, clarify the nature of his relationship to a complete stranger.

It's not that he minds the assumption, far from. He finds the term girlfriend… irritating. It feels reductive, to address the mother of his child in the same way a thirteen year old boy who just asked a girl to go steady would. Not that labels mean much to him, they're just words in the end. But even so, surely there has to be a better term for people in their thirties to use when talking about the people they loved and were not necessarily married to.

They're a family now. Aren't they? There is a house and a mortgage and a child… a child who depends on them to get their shit together and not dance around the future like it was some kind of rabid monster that will swallow up their present happiness. Stability is becoming a comfort in ways which feel alien and its unnerving, to know certainty this close up and not be able to trust it'll stay.

Peter is certainly no stranger to fluid, unformed situations, thrives in them to be accurate. But this is a deceptive amorphousness. The promise of forever lurks in the abysses, tempts him, tells him it's okay, he can stop living one day at a time. He can hold on a little tighter to what he has and not be scared it's going to be ripped away from him yet again.

But history is a spiteful bitch. It reminds him that nothing stays, nothing is forever, that things go wrong often. And it's likely he won't have a say in the matter when it does again, just like he didn't the times before.

He needs to have that talk with Olivia… he decides.

* * *

He gets home and after putting away the groceries, heads upstairs to their bedroom. Olivia's lying down on their bed, eyes closed. She sleeps better since the pregnancy, her restless borderline insomnia having given way to some semblance of balanced rest, partly because growing a human being simply wears one out and partly because Olivia had actively made an effort to eat and rest better, treating her body with the kind of well-deserved reverence that he'd never seen her do before, out of deference for their growing child.

He hopes the habit lives on. He likes not being the only one concerned about her well being.

Etta sleeps a few feet away from her, swaddled in a cream and blue blanket, a pillow on her other side to ensure she doesn't roll off, Olivia's one hand reaches out, laid softly across her little tummy. It's an irresistible tendency they both are all too prone to , to touch, to feel as much as they can, to keep her close and not let her out of sight beyond absolutely necessary.

His lips curve into what he knows is a hopelessly sappy smile when he catches sight of Etta's little hand peeking out from below the folds of the blanket, tiny fingers fidgeting as she sniffles in her sleep.

No one tells you….. how easily you fall in love with your child. How it feels like you got zapped by lightning the first time you look at her and she stares back at you with those bottomless blue eyes. How holding her in your arms feels like whatever contentment is supposed to feel like, and you know in that moment nothing will really compare.

Somebody should have warned him, Peter thinks...what he would feel, how much he would feel.

He might have not found himself so in over his head…so completely awash with strange and new emotions.

Olivia stirs, becoming aware of his presence in the way she always is, giving him a sleepy smile of acknowledgement. She looks a little less disheveled than him. Her hair is wet, dark, indicating that at some point while he was gone, she'd taken a shower and changed into a fresh pair of sweats and t-shirt.

But the marks of exhaustion mar every part of her face. She looks just about drained as he does, more so.

" You're back…" She whispers softly, in lieu of the sleeping infant, her eyes already half-closed again. " Did you get everything?"

He nods to her, surveying the state of their room, he bends down to gather all the clothes that have remain discarded over the past couple of days, adding his shirt and jeans to the pile, balling them up into a tidy heap.

"Are there any more clothes?" He whispers to Olivia who is watching him quietly. " I'll turn on the machine before I head into the shower."

" You look really tired, why don't you rest for a bit first?"

" In a while… et me just load the machine."

She smiles, shaking her head at him. " It'll get done." "Honey you can barely stand. Come here." She holds out her hand to him. "Lie down with me for a while."

He smiles at the invitation, drops the pile obediently, not needing much persuasion really. The back of his eyelids ache with fatigue. He allows her to pull him into bed next to her, as she takes his hand and wraps it around her waist, sighing as she folds into his embrace, her angles molding into his in a perfect arch.

She fits so well in his arms.

He inhales deeply, breathing in the clean scent of her freshly showered skin and her shampoo, fragrances he's become all too accustomed to over the years, his sensitivity to it has become sharper now, that he's been living in close quarters with her over the months.

" Did you eat anything?" He asks her a hand snaking up to her shoulder as he rubs slow circles with his thumb.

" Too tired to go downstairs." She mumbles in the negative, her hand coming up to play with his nape, she runs gentle fingers through his hair. " It's a wonder I didn't fall asleep in the shower."

" I'll bring you something." He makes to move, but she stills him with a firm hand.  _Stay_ , she tells him. He frowns against her skin, getting ready to express his displeasure, when she squeezes the arm around her, turning to face him.

" I'll eat later, promise."

He nods, pulling her closer, her forehead resting against his chest, she brings a hand up to his face, closing over his eyelids.

" I want you to get some proper sleep." She says, softly again, all their conversations have become exchanges in hushed voices. " You're running yourself into the ground doing everything."

He resists the urge to snort. He wants to remind her that she's the one who spent 23 excruciating hours in labor not to mention the actual birth, that she's the one who carried their child for nine months and put up with every annoyance because of it and that she's the one who's awake at 2:30 in the mornings for a late night feeding.

But he knows she'll shrug it off and so he simply murmurs in agreement against her neck, closing his eyes.

" I think we could both use some of that."

They lie together, in the place between wakefulness and slumber, too tired to be fully aware and yet unable to disengage with their surroundings, a restlessness that won't yield to the needs of their bodies. His left hand hand keeps busy, travelling down to the hem of her shirt, sneaking under the cotton it makes contact with skin. He caresses gently, calloused fingertips languidly running over the now once-again flat stomach. It feels softer than he remembers, loose, almost spongy where she was once lean and corded and all muscle. He traces the texture of a thin stretch mark that now marks her lower right abdomen, feeling the curves where there were once angles.

Its transformation, in more one ways than one, a body given over to nature's process and now slowly returning to original state. He can chart the differences like it were his own skin, because he knows her intimately, in all the ways he's not used to knowing women, never having shared so much time and space with anybody to be in so tune with shifts in their moods and their states, to bear witness to the changes in their physicality.

It's a knowledge he realizes he's more than thankful for, as he pauses his listless exploration, palm pressing softly against her belly, thinking about what that means.

If he'll have the opportunity to know her like this forever, for a lifetime.

" What?" She whispers as she senses the question in the touch. She's adept at decoding all his silences, his touches. He smiles at her knowing tone and pulls her lips into a kiss. Her lips still feel tingly from spearmint toothpaste, she must have brushed recently.

"This is nice. Yeah?"

He can feel her smile against his lips, knowing he's not talking about the sleep deprivation, or the aching joints or the general fatigue that has them both on the brink of a coma right then.

"It's very nice." She nods agreeably.

" You think we'll get to do this for good?"

She tenses slightly before relaxing again, eyes open now, watching him, shaking her head in a somewhat amused smile. They reflect a flicker of his own anxiety. He smiles too.

Optimism has never been their strong suit.

" I think…" She pauses, no doubt to choose her words carefully. Olivia never did like making promises she couldn't deliver on.

"I think there's a strong possibility that we will."

" Good." It's good enough for now, he decides, closing his eyes, giving into the lull that has been calling to him for over five hours now.

He almost sleeps for a glorious half an hour before Etta murmurs next to them and in that instance he knows they're both holding their breath, afraid to make a sound, lest she wake up. But she stirs anyway in a matter of seconds, crying out in half-hearted bursts. She doesn't like to be very loud, they've found.

Olivia sighs against him, turning over to attend to their daughter, picking her up from her cocoon of blankets.

"Let me take her." He automatically reaches out with his arms, taking the baby from her hands. He lays her on his chest, securing her with his arms.

"It's okay kiddo. I've got you." He rubs slow, feather light circles on her back, in a repeated motion that has had some success in soothing her before. "I swear she does this on purpose. Almost like she doesn't want us to sleep…ever."

Olivia smiles, her hand joining his. She rests her head on the other side of his chest, closing her eyes once again.

"Welcome to the next seventeen years of your life." She chuckles.

He smiles too. This is his future now and its also right now. And it doesn't make him afraid.

" Liv…"

" Hmm?"

" I think I never said thank you."

" What for?"

" For all of it." He tightens his hold over Etta. He wants to hold on tighter.

" For all of it Liv…"

 


End file.
